House Republicans’ top tax writer is set to offer something unthinkable in virtually any other context: a big new tax on the wealthy.

A proposal slated to be released this week by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp will include a special surcharge on the wealthy, according to documents obtained by POLITICO. The surtax and a new bank tax that lobbyists are widely expecting both sound like proposals Democrats have repeatedly offered in recent years, drawing scoffs from Republicans.

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The Camp plan narrows tax brackets and cuts the top individual and corporate rate to 25 percent but includes a special 10 percent surtax on joint income more than $450,000, according to the document, confirmed by a Republican aide. The wealthiest individuals now face a top tax rate of about 40 percent, while the top corporate rate is about 35 percent to make the difficult math behind any reform work, and it would have the added political bonus of allowing him to claim that he’s extending an olive branch to Democrats.

The Michigan Republican is expected to release his long-awaited plan Wednesday. Rumors have swirled in recent days on K Street that big banks and insurers will face a special surcharge, likely 3.5 percent basis points on financial firms with more than $500 billion in assets.

These two ideas are reminiscent of the administration’s proposed “Buffett rule” on millionaires as well as a proposed bank tax proposed by President Barack Obama in recent years. Industry lobbyists say the bank levy will apply to financial institutions with more than $500 billion in assets, which would hit a far narrower slice of industry than Obama’s $50 billion threshold.

At the same time, lobbyists who have seen the proposal say it will cap the deduction for home mortgages at $500,000 from the current $1 million cap — a controversial idea sure to set off a fierce lobbying campaign by home builders, Realtors and others. It also changes a popular tax break for research and development — requiring amortization rather than immediate write-offs for certain expenses, including advertising.

Other controversial changes include a repeal of the state and local tax deduction and conversion of some 401(k) accounts to Roth-like ones.

A Democratic source who has seen highlights of the proposal also confirmed these changes.

The new taxes could be used to help answer some basic questions surrounding any tax reform.

Like: How do you slash the top rate on the wealthy, as Camp has promised, while still keeping the distribution of the tax burden among different income classes approximately the same, as Camp has also promised?

It’s hard to avoid favoring the wealthy, who face top rates reaching almost 45 percent, in part because many low-income Americans already don’t pay federal income taxes. So one way to fix that may be with a surcharge on the wealthy.

The problem with that?

It could be seen as reneging on Republicans’ long-standing promises to slash the top rate to 25 percent.

“He really is going back on his 25 percent,” said John Buckley, a former chief tax counsel for Ways and Means Democrats and onetime head of the Joint Committee on Taxation. “He’s having a 25 percent top rate plus a 10 percent surtax — 10 and 25 equals 35. That’s as much as I know about higher math.”

Another question: How do you reform the corporate Tax Code without inadvertently favoring big banks?

A disproportionate share of the individual corporate tax breaks, like accelerated depreciation, would be used to finance a reduction in the top corporate tax rate of 35 percent favor manufacturing firms. Banks, by contrast, use relatively few of those narrow preferences.

So junking them to cut rates could mean raising the effective tax rate on manufacturers and slashing them on Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs — a politically toxic combination for Camp’s colleagues. The answer to that conundrum could be a special bank tax.

Meanwhile, deductions for intangible drilling costs – a benefit for oil and gas companies – will not be touched in the plan, a key ally to Camp said.

Rep. Charles Boustany told POLITICO the breaks stay the same and were a condition he had in supporting the bill.

”My understanding is that it stays (as) current law,” Boustany said.

When an oil company wants to drill a well to look for oil, it can under present law “expense,” or quickly deduct, the costs for labor, drilling and rig time. These are known in the tax code as “intangible drilling costs.”

Oil companies say these costs are the equivalent of their research and development costs, like the effort and resources Apple Inc engineers expend to create their next big gadget.

Critics say this tax break, dating to the beginning of the code, is unjustifiable. As a general rule, though there are other exceptions, expenses incurred by a business for the intent of producing future income must be written off over time, not right away.

The balancing act for tax writers highlights the disparate tax treatment corporations now face. Even those companies within the same industry can pay widely differing tax breaks — depending on their headquarters, business model and amount of business they do outside the United States.